I liked a lot about it, mainly how bad at being a super hero Peter was through basically all of it. His powers allow him to have moderate success against regular criminals, but they manage to keep him mostly seeming like a kid who is trying to hang out with the adults, which was an interesting and smart choice. It felt a bit like back tracking though since he had already--you know--fought against half the Avengers in a previous movie that is deliberately shown to occur prior to this movie.

It was refreshing to see teenage Peter Parker try to and succeed in saving the bad guy at the end. While it was a little muddled, I think it was also nicely uncliche that they sort of showed the Vulture to not really have any desire to kill Peter either. They got into a fight, obviously, but in the end after it looks like he's bested Spider-man, he stabs his wing blade thing into Peter's clothes and just sorta lifts him up and throws him aside because he's not a threat anymore. He's mad at the trouble Peter has caused him, but he really just wants to steal one of the containers and fly away, not kill this kid who is going out with his daughter and thought he was doing the right thing. That character representation carries on into the final epilogue where he doesn't give Peter's identity up. It's maybe a little bit cryptic as to why, but I feel like he was protecting him.

Anyway, so many of the other movies involve the villains always dying at the end and deserving it and Spider-man can't save them. It was nice to see the "The villain is just too bad, there's nothing you could have done so it's okay that he died" trope finally strayed from for once.

The other thing I liked was that MJ was not treated as a one-note love interest and was instead given an actual likable character so that maybe we'll actually care about her like Peter will eventually instead of just care about Peter getting her as some sorta reward for being a heroic good guy. In contrast, Liz is just basically there as a love interest, with only enough character developed so that she doesn't feel cheesy, but in the end is just used as a plot device, and not given any unearned importance, so it's unimportant that she's underdeveloped and it mostly avoids damsel tropes. Saving her in the elevator is not some relegation of a female character to prize for hero; Peter's whole class practically was in that elevator, it was just people for Spider-man to save like a hero. Perhaps tellingly, MJ wasn't even in that elevator because she was outside practicing her Daria voice.

My big problem with the movie and maybe someone can explain this to me because I just wasn't paying enough attention or something to a movie I was 3/4s watching on plex while sorta doing other stuff: What the hell was the moral/arc supposed to be. I didn't get it at all.

So...

Spider-man intervenes on that boat (Meet me on the ferry, come alone.) to try and stop Vulture™ and Shocker™, a fight breaks out and everyone on the boat could have gotten killed. He tries his best to save the day, but can't and then Iron Man comes in and fixes everything. So Iron Man yells at him for starting trouble instead of just leaving it to the adults and endangering all those people by exacerbating the situation. I have two problems with this:

1. Stark told the FBI about it anyway and they were there to bust it up. What would have been any different if Spider-man had not been there? The criminals would have just tried to shoot their way out and exactly the same thing or worse could have happened and Spider-man wouldn't have been there to hold the boat together until Iron Man came, which would have been worse, not better. So why was it a problem that he was there.

2. After this, Spider-man goes and does the exact same thing again, trying to stop Vulture from attacking the plane and almost causes a calamity AGAIN. He BARELY manages to stop the plane from crashing into the middle of the city, it's a miracle no one is killed. But he's successful and so now Iron Man is all happy about it. What? Why? He just did exactly what you told not to do and by pure luck, it turned out okay and helped you out. What was Spider-man or any of us meant to learn from this? If the lesson was that Iron Man is kind of a dickward, don't be like him or listen to him, Spider-man did the right thing in spite of him, that's fine but why present it like this? These movies after Iron Man one can never seem to clearly communicate if Iron Man is a good guy with flaws that get him into trouble, or is a complete maniac who should never be trusted.

It was all very muddled to me and made no real sense. Like what was the point of the big "if you need the suit then you don't deserve it" line and theme? You've got to prove that you're good at being a super hero on your own before I'll help you do it? This isn't some fun, high paying job, Stark! He's trying to save people's lives!

Is the moral of the movie, don't try to save people unless you are qualified to do it and have a proven track record of saving them or otherwise you might end up making things worse? That seems like a very strange moral to put in a movie about a plucky teen super hero and it sure was a strange and inappropriate way to tell it...

I also just watched this and oh my god the only reason 9/11 3 didn't happen was due to pure frantic dumb luck.

I actually was wondering during the entire battle on the jet if this was REALLY the right way to go about this, seeing as how, if Spider-Man had just left it, hundreds upon hundreds of people wouldn't have been placed into direct danger.

Thor: Comedy has taken over Marvel Moviesarok is a really fun take on the end of the world.

Remember how Winter Soldier was a serious movie with moments of levity? Thor is a levity movie with... well, I won't call them serious moments, but slightly less "Thor hits himself in the face with a rubber ball rebounding off a wall" moments.

Note that I don't have a problem with this. It's just weird to go to a Marvel movie nowadays expecting a superhero movie but instead get a comedy. (GotG2, Spider-Man, Thor 3)

That being said, Thor 3 is probably one of the best in the MCU. Highly recommended.

I like how the Thor movies have always been the ones most willing to go full Kirby in their aesthetics, and Thor 3 cranked that up a notch with the cosmic stuff. There are Kirby ships and Kirby tanks. (Stan Goldberg deserves a mention too, because his color schemes are right in there.)

I never got around to seeing What We Do in the Shadows but now I'm really interested in checking it out.

Thor 2 committed the sin of being both really dark and really boring at the same time, which always makes whatever is doing that into this bland, boring, overly serious grey blob that nobody can fully remember within a month of experiencing it. (It had a few good moments, though.)

Friday wrote:Thor 2 committed the sin of being both really dark and really boring at the same time, which always makes whatever is doing that into this bland, boring, overly serious grey blob that nobody can fully remember within a month of experiencing it. (It had a few good moments, though.)

And yeah, loved seeing all the Kirby stuff taken to 11 in Ragnarok.

Thor 2 was "hey here's this crazy red shit, it's super dangerous, also there's some Drow, and oh btw the red stuff was an Infinity Stone". That's all you need to know from it.

Yeah, it's easily one of the worst movies in the MCU, and most skippable in terms of understanding the overall plot. Up there with the First Captain America movie, which boils down even simpler to "He was injected with a serum, then he got frozen."

It's me, the rare Dark World defender. Like, it's not a fantastic movie, but there's some fun looney tunes shit in the climactic fight scene and some good little character moments. I'd definitely put it above Iron Man 2 at the very least. Note that I'm not to be trusted since I'm pretty gay for hiddleloki and kat dennings and they're basically the bright spots in that movie so and also chris o'dowd is in it for like two seconds. I'm still incredibly curious as to what could have been if Patty Jenkins had remained on board, or if the Thor movies could have all existed after Marvel made GotG and loosened their house style up a bit, but I'll watch it if it's on.

also while i'd definitely say captain america first avenger is inessential to THE MCU CANON as far as following what's going on, that's super fucking to its credit and it's just an enjoyable damn movie. I'm REALLY hoping that after infinity war the whole "that's setting up something else, take a drink" goes back to more of the casual littering around of plot points that they COULD run with down the line. Ant-Man and Doctor Strange both got in and out pretty well for the same reason and it's why I kinda hate Age of Ultron and Iron Man 2 the most on that sliding scale.

That being said there hasn't been a single MCU movie I outright disliked, which is pretty much what they're shooting for. If I'd made one condemnation of the whole franchise experiment it's just how fucking much they rely on fan-expectations to just fill in the blanks between movies; it's this really strange exploitation of fanfic mindset that no other franchise has really able been able to rely on that could be argued as "we trust our audiences!" but really just lets them slam their action figures where they need to be on the bigger board without any considerations.

WE WERE FRENDS sez iron man but when the fuck did steve and tony become really good friends in the mcu? oh it just all happened off screen. HULK BONE WIDOW but uh what when why where? I was having a conversation about this last night and as oversaturated as the marvel release schedule is, they could honestly benefit from an extra movie slotted in between their big crossover films actually showing the stories that happen in between. I'd totally have watched the never-happening Black Widow movie where Bruce is acting like her Q that shows just how they ended up coming together, or if Iron Man 3 had been able to spend some time with Chris Evans showing Steve really coming through for Tony when he was down and out, etc etc. They want to have their serialization but also not really put in the work for it in a way that is totally sacrificing interesting character moments and stories -- but at the same time, they might be rightly assuming a lot of their audiences wouldn't have the patience for an even slower build, but that also leads to the farm/cave shit from Ultron.

idk i am still pretty much a huge mark for the mcu and see everything as soon as i can when it comes out, and it's impressive as hell that they've kept the wheels AS on the rails as they have up to now, but the more time goes on the more it feels like they're ignoring or doubling down on the existing flaws in the system and i really hope infinity wars shakes them up to something much looser and freer afterward

The claim being made that Thor Ragnarockandrule is about on par with GotG 1, seems apt. Good, fun, funny. Yep. I particularly enjoyed the cameo by the entire nation of New Zealand.

Niku wrote:HULK BONE WIDOW but uh what when why where?

I was looking for this after having seen you mention it and I totally didn't see where? I thought that Thor realizing this would make for a pretty funny scene (though "That's in my brain now" is even funnier).

To be fair, the movie did cut out in the scene in Hulk's bedroom, but they did rewind it such that nobody missed anything (and as a bonus we all got free tickets good for another movie - yay!).

Friday wrote:Thor 2 committed the sin of being both really dark and really boring at the same time, which always makes whatever is doing that into this bland, boring, overly serious grey blob that nobody can fully remember within a month of experiencing it. (It had a few good moments, though.)

And yeah, loved seeing all the Kirby stuff taken to 11 in Ragnarok.

And remembering that Simonson's run was fun.

It sounds like Thor 2 adapted the Casket of Ancient Winters storyline and only kept the dour parts, and forgot how much fun Simonson Thor was.

Simonson can definitely do dour (his current, non-Marvel Thor series, Ragnarok, is bleak post-apocalyptic stuff; it's fantastic but there's not a whole lot of levity) but his Thor run had all kinds of crazy shit. Thor: Ragnarok didn't just remember that, it explicitly referenced it; they mentioned Frog Thor in dialogue, and I couldn't place every champion carved into the tower, but I did notice Beta Ray Bill.

His serious stuff was in there too, though; the Surtur visuals were very Simonson, and the entire Scourge arc was his.

Okay I will say I enjoyed Thor 2 a lot when I saw it because I was high as sin at the time and it made me overlook absolutely everything that didn't work in that movie. But, now that I think back on it, it wasn't all space-elves and Asguard, it was this weird awful drab flatlands planet where they all slugged it out joylessly in a field, and it was going all the way back to Earth for the climax, and it was Thor's girlfriend regularly showing up as a character when she hasn't been given anything to do in two full movies. So yeah, I guess a lot of it wasn't very good.

Niku how on Earth can you say Ant-Man belongs in the bottom five when Dr. Strange is an option

I've yet to meet anyone who agrees with my (or anyone's, really) top five or bottom five MCU movies. I mean, Niku thinks Iron Man 2 is bottom five and most people I've talked to think it's top five. Personally, I think it's somewhere in the middle.